DEBATENATE

Topics / Culture

The challenge

“Monogamy is outdated”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Lifelong monogamy is one of the best ideas civilization ever had, and it wasn't civilization's idea. Genesis two says a man leaves his father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh. One man, one woman, for life. And it works. Anthropologist Joseph Henrich and two colleagues argued in twenty twelve that monogamous marriage cools competition among men, lowers crime and gets fathers investing in their kids. Sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur found children raised with only one parent do worse on average. You'll say plenty of marriages fail. Plenty of diets fail too, and nobody calls vegetables outdated. Let me ask you this. If the new arrangements are better for kids, where's the society that made them work at scale? Outdated just means old. So is the wheel. Still rolling.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Monogamous marriage isn't just a private taste. It calms male competition and points men at their own families.

    Henrich, Boyd and Richerson argued that normative monogamy reduces competition among men and is associated with lower crime and greater paternal investment in children.

  2. Kids have the most at stake, and on average they do best when both parents stay committed to each other.

    McLanahan and Sandefur found that children who grow up with only one parent fare worse on average on outcomes such as finishing high school.

  3. Outdated isn't an argument. It assumes newer is better and never shows why.

    C. S. Lewis described this mistake as chronological snobbery, the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is therefore discredited.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Humans aren't naturally monogamous, so expecting lifelong fidelity just sets people up to fail and feel guilty.

Nate: Plenty of good things don't come naturally. Patience. Saving money. Telling the truth when it costs you. The question was never whether monogamy is hard. It's whether it's good, and the evidence on kids and communities says it is.

The lines

Sources

  1. Henrich, Boyd and Richerson, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, The puzzle of monogamous marriage (2012)
  2. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Harvard University Press, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (1994)
  3. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955)
  4. The Bible, Genesis 2:24

More like this